Sex-role patterns, paternal rearing attitudes and child development in different social classes

Abstract

Sex-role patterns, the father''s rearing attitude and the child''s intellectual and emotional development in different social classes were studied in a randomly selected sample of 58 Swedish unbroken families of a small child. Working class men and women married younger and the women were more often house-wives. Working class men had more often been reared in an authoritarian way and more often reared their children in the same way. Upper middle class men had taken a more active part in the care of the child. Working class children scored lower on the intelligence tests, especially the verbal ones and were more estimated as socially immature.